The Sharp Ease

At long last, Los Angeles scene favorite the Sharp Ease unleashes its first full-length release. The all-female quartet hails straight from the garage--the 12 songs clock in at just more than 27 minutes. The band offers Pixies-style guitar noise and vocal nods to fellow Angeleno Exene Cervenka. Deciphering the meaning of lyrics can get tricky, but jumpy choruses (particularly on "Joan") keep the music moving. - The Advocate

Oh, the art school puns just abound on this delightful hard rockin' harmonic pop album, beginning with the name of the all-girl Sharp Ease (geddit?). And while these four women may publicly deny it, one listen is all it'll take for you to suss out that musically they're influenced by everyone ranging from the melancholic melodrama of Tom Verlaine to the heavenly harmonies of Brian Wilson.

The vocals by singer Paloma Parfey are an engaging cross between Chrissie Hynde at her bedroom sexiest and Lene Lovich at her bedbug craziest. But it's her Enossified lyrics which are pure paranoid John Cale: "Tomorrow…tomorrow the fat will rise and it'll harden and curdle, discolored and separated from it all and it pours on those who need the fall…"

Any way you slice it, the Sharp Ease are the smartest all-girl art rock band in the world. And you can quote me on that because they're number one in a field of one. So go out and buy Going Modern because you won't get Byrned if you do.
- Jeffrey Morgan

"The Sharp Ease sound like LA--the born-and-raised LA, not the cliched palm-trees-and-poodles shtick. They're sifting their songs out of the foggy early morning freeway drives and fuzzy late-night, cheap-wine-and-basic-cable binges that counterpoint the terminal excitement of the city, the same way the Modern Lovers put suburban Boston into two chords and a "1-2-3-4-5-6!" or X goosed drinking in a puddled alley off Cherokee and Hollywood Boulevard into poetry. You're in love with the AM radio, the world's a mess in your kiss, and--from "T-Spin"--anything worth waiting for will never, never come."
- Chris Zeigler

"Going Modern is the complete antithesis to every synthetic, indie-inspired dance album to satu-rate the music world in 2004. The Sharp Ease have learned from danceable art-rockers like Gang of Four and The Yeah Yeah Yeah's that the first step to getting someone on the dance floor is getting their attention. A little raw energy doesn't hurt either." - Mike Swidrak